Complex Sites

Get Your Weekly Digest

Search

COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive.

Ex-Facebook Employees Reveal What It's Really Like Working for Mark Zuckerberg

Trace William Cowen is a writer based in Los Angeles. He tweets with dramatic irregularity here.

Jan 10, 2019

Image via Getty/Taylor Hill

Facebook, though now most known for being both a great place to go watch people argue about news that's days (and often weeks!) old and an equally great place to learn your ex has suddenly morphed into Alex Jones 2.0, is also an actual company with actual employees. In a new investigative piece from CNBC, the working conditions for those at the social media company founded by Mark Zuckerberg are detailed and—surprise!—they're, um, (allegedly) not great.

The advancement of the "authentic self" is widely discouraged from leadership, according to the report. Multiple former employees who were interviewed for the piece compared the general company vibes to those of a full-blown cult.

"There's a real culture of 'Even if you are fucking miserable, you need to act like you love this place,'" an ex Facebook employee who left the company in October said. "It is not OK to act like this is not the best place to work." This allegedly forced facade of the ideal workplace is also said to extend to the behavior of Facebook employees on the site itself.

"There's so many people there who are unhappy, but their Facebook posts alone don't reflect the backdoor conversations you have with people where they're crying and really unhappy," another ex Facebook employee toldCNBC.

POST CONTINUES BELOW

To make matters worse, former employees say, not even any internal review practices can help with getting this message of overall dissatisfaction to the top due to those processes also being allegedly compromised by this cult-like atmosphere. Furthermore, the twice-a-year crunches caused by these employee reviews is blamed by multiple former Facebook employees as integral in how the social networking giant has come to face multiple privacy scandals in recent years.

In short, Facebook's general shittiness does indeed (allegedly) extend to how its employees are treated. For more, read the full report here and/or wait a few weeks to see a relative share the article on Facebook as if it just happened.